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A Cambridge College has reacted to the university wide inquiry by removing a historic bell from view, amid fears it was used on a slave plantation.

St Catharine’s College believe that the Demerara Bell, which was donated by alumnus Edward Goodland in the 1960s, “most likely” came from a slave plantation.

The bell remains in place but has been “shuttered” off from view while the College investigates its origins.

Founded in 1473, St Catharine’s counts the broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and the actor Sir Ian McKellen among its alumni.

Last month, Cambridge University announced that it will launch an inquiry to see how the 800-year-old institution benefited from the slave trade.

Researchers have been commissioned to pore over the university’s archives to how much it gained from the “Atlantic slave trade and other forms of coerced labour during the colonial era”.

The two-year inquiry will examine whether financial bequests made to departments, libraries and museums were made possible from the profits of slavery.

The inquiry only covers university-owned buildings and faculties, but it is understood that Colleges are following suit and investigating their own links to the slave trade.

Gill Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at Cambridge University, said that Colleges will “all want to jump on the bandwagon”.

She told the Daily Telegraph: “It has now become a reputational damage issue. This is clearly the next line of worry. No College will want to be the last ones to do it.”

Mr Goodland studied at St Catharine’s from 1930-33 and went on to become a successful industrialist, running a factory that made sulphuric acid and cement.

He was appointed as the technical director at Bookers Sugar Estates in the then British colony of British Guiana, which is now Guyana, according to the archived issues of the College’s magazine, St Catharine’s College Society.

Mr Goodland donated the eighteenth century mission bell with the inscription "De Catherina 1772” to the College a few years after his arrival in British Guiana in 1958.

It was initially hung in a belfry outside the Porter’s lodge where it was used to “summon College residents to food and to prayer”, the magazine says but in 1994 it was moved to a less prominent position in one of the accommodation blocks.

The Booker Group, which was the UK's largest food wholesale operator and founded the Booker Prize for literature, controlled most of the sugar industry in British Guiana at its peak and was so powerful that the country was referred to as "Booker's Guiana".

A spokesperson for the College said: “As part of the ongoing reflection taking place about the links between universities and slavery, we are aware that a bell currently located at the College most likely came from a slave plantation.

“A more detailed investigation is under way into the bell’s provenance as part of a wider project researching the College’s historical links to the slave trade.”

Dr Miranda Griffin, the College’s senior tutor, said it is important for St Catharine’s to “acknowledge historical links to slavery and the slave trade”.

She added: “As an academic community, we will continue to conduct rigorous research into all aspects of our past and to reflect on our commitment to diversity, inclusion and asking challenging questions.”